The increasing demand for immediate responses and the sheer volume of inquiries can overwhelm even the best support teams.
The majority (71%) of customers now expect brands to provide customer support through messaging. Combine that with a growing preference for self-service support, and it’s clear that chatbots are quickly becoming a necessary addition to any customer service strategy.
At Chatling, we understand the importance of selecting the right chatbot for your customer support needs. That’s why we tested and compared the top five chatbots available on the market. We took into account features like ease of set-up, scalability, compatibility with existing tools and resources, and integration options to help you find the perfect fit for your customer service operations.
Here’s what we found.
What Are Chatbots for Customer Support?
Customer service chatbots are tools that use AI or preset rules (or both) to interact with customers.
They're programmed to understand customer questions and provide answers, or direct the customer to a human support representative when they can’t answer a question. Chatbots can be integrated into websites, social media platforms, messaging apps, and other customer service channels.
The goal with these tools isn’t to automate every customer service inquiry, but to reduce the number of inquiries that require a human response. Only about 30-50% of customer inquiries require a human response, so automating the other 50-70% helps to reduce costs and increases efficiency.
For example, you can automate almost all:
- Order update requests
- Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
- Product advice
- Shipping information deliveries
Chatbot for Customer Support Example: Codiska
Codiska is a Chatling customer that offers multilingual coding education to students. After integrating Chatling with their website, Codiska immediately saw improvements in customer engagement and satisfaction.
By using the automated customer service chatbot, Codiska quickly responded to inquiries and queries from customers in all supported languages—meaning they could answer questions faster than ever before. Not only did this improve the overall user experience, but it also saved time and resources for the team at Codiska.
Benefits of Using a Chatbot for Customer Support
- Enhanced Efficiency: Chatbots streamline customer support operations by instantly responding to routine queries, reducing response times, and handling a high volume of inquiries simultaneously.
- Consistent Customer Experience: Chatbots deliver a consistent and standardized customer experience by providing uniform responses to frequently asked questions, which ensures that your customers receive accurate information and support.
- 24/7 Availability: Unlike traditional customer support channels with limited operating hours, chatbots provide round-the-clock assistance.
Cost-Effective: Chatbots handle a large volume of routine queries, allowing businesses to allocate human support agents to more specialized tasks. This cost-effective approach ensures efficient resource utilization and contributes to overall budget optimization.
Criteria To Consider When Choosing The Right Chatbot for Customer Support
Ease of Integration
Opt for a chatbot solution that seamlessly integrates with your existing systems and platforms. The ease of integration minimizes downtime and ensures a smooth transition into your customer support workflow.
Chatling takes the hassle out of chatbot integration, ensuring a smooth and effortless process across various third-party platforms.
Whether you are looking for chatbots for Shopify, Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, PrestaShop, or want to integrate with another tool through Zapier, Chatling lets you do it all.
AI-Capability & Natural Language Processing
Not all chatbots use AI—and that leads to issues. Non-AI chatbots have trouble understanding complex queries and cannot understand misspellings. Choose a chatbot with advanced AI capabilities and natural language processing (NLP) to automate customer support service.
NLP allows your chatbot to process and interact with customers in a more natural, human-like manner. Chatling leverages state-of-the art NLP technology so that customers can access the information they need without having to wait for a response from an agent.
Customization
The ability to tailor the chatbot's appearance, behavior, and responses allows you to align it with your brand identity and meet the specific needs of your customer base.
For example, Chatling allows you to change the look of your chat widget and chatbox using a simple editor. You can add text inputs to let your chatbot know how it should interact with customers—what personality to assume, what keywords should trigger a response, and so on.
Finally, you can customize your chatbot’s knowledge to support niche use cases y controlling what training data you link.
5 Best Chatbots for Customer Support
- Chatling
- Chatfuel
- Intercom Fin
- Drift
- Kommunicate
1. Chatling
Chatling is an AI chatbot that lets you offer accurate, round-the-clock customer support on any website.
Chatling trains on data from URLs, FAQs, knowledge bases, documents, and text inputs to learn about your business and policies. It then uses this data to generate accurate, up-to-date responses to customer queries.
We use built-in guardrails to prevent bots from giving inappropriate answers and to ensure only accurate, timely responses. Plus, detailed conversation analytics help you find and fix blind spots in your customer support resources.
Key Features
- Easy Integration: Easily add Chatling to any website—WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, and more.
- Train on your Data: Train your chatbot on URLs, FAQs, knowledge bases, documents, and more.
- Accurate Responses: Get accurate responses in real-time with the help of natural language processing algorithms.
- Conversation Analytics: Track customer conversations to identify gaps in your customer support resources.
- Customizable Settings: Change the appearance and settings to match the look and feel of your website.
- 24/7 Availability: Provide customers with help anytime, anywhere with our always-on chatbot solution.
- API: Integrate Chatling with other tools and create custom workflows.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Supports multiple types of data sources
- Multilingual support
- Track chatbot conversations
- Conversational
- Easy setup
- Offers free plan
Cons:
- Limited native integrations
2. Chatfuel
Chatfuel is an AI chatbot solution for Meta products (WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram) and websites.
It’s primarily sales-focused, but there are a few great support features under the hood. Like other tools on this list, Chatfuel trains on your data and uses it to respond to customer questions with resolutions or remediation (discount codes, product suggestions, etc.).
Key Features
- Offer Discount Codes: Reduce churn by offering discounts or loyalty rewards when customers reach out with issues.
- Create Multiple Flows: Create multiple customer journeys, branching off into different paths depending on user input.
- Easy Integration: Integrates natively with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.
Pricing
Chatfuel charges separately for Facebook & Instagram and WhatsApp. Both products have two plans each:
Facebook & Instagram
- Business ($14.39+/month)
- Enterprise ($300+/month)
- Business ($41.29+/month)
- Enterprise ($300+/month)
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Offers free trial
- Automated feedback requests
- Schedule bookings
- Custom plans available
Cons
- Limited analytics
- Limited customization options
3. Intercom
Intercom is a well-known customer service platform that recently launched an AI customer support chatbot—Fin AI.
Intercom’s Fin is easy to train by linking Intercom articles, Zendesk Help Centers, public URLs, and more. It’ll automatically train on the data within minutes, so you can start chatting with customers quickly.
Key Features
- Reduce Support Tickets: Reduce support tickets by addressing customer queries quickly and accurately.
- Omnichannel: Integrates across various communication channels for a unified and cohesive customer support experience.
- Monitor Conversations: Gain valuable insights into customer interactions, allowing support teams to assess and optimize their strategies.
Pricing
Intercom offers three plans—Essential ($39/month), Advanced ($99/month), and Expert ($139/month).
All three plans support Fin, but each resolution costs 99 cents. So, for example, 500 resolutions per month adds $495 to your monthly bill).
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Offers free trial
- Multilingual support
- Omnichannel support
- Highly accurate answers
Cons
- No free plan after the free trial
- Limited customization options
4. Drift
Drift is a conversational sales, marketing, and support tool that uses chatbots to increase support capacity.
Drift uses a combination of AI chatbots and rule-based bots to answer basic customer questions and direct more complex inquiries to the right humans. The AI can detect the intent of the customer it’s interacting with and direct the conversation down prebuilt flows that can help answer a wide range of customer queries.
Key Features
- Bionic Chatbots: Generate accurate responses to nuanced customer questions with AI.
- Real-Time Feedback: Collect feedback on chatbot performance mid-conversation.
- Metrics & Analytics: Access key metrics like revenue attribution and time saved to see how Drift is impacting your business.
Pricing
Drift offers three pricing plans—Premium ($2,500/month), Advanced (custom), and Enterprise (custom). AI chatbots are an enterprise-only feature.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Custom pricing
- Live chat
- A/B Testing
- Real-time notifications
Cons
- No free plan is available
- AI chatbots available only for Enterprise plan users
5. Kommunicate
Finally, Kommunicate—an AI chatbot tool that integrates with may popular messaging tools.
While the AI generation was occasionally unhelpful or irrelevant, the tool offers smooth agent transfer and conversation handover. You can also customize the interface and create automated workflows to save time and resources.
Key Features
- No Coding Needed: Build and deploy chatbots without any coding requirements.
- Customization: Tailor the chatbot according to its brand identity and unique support requirements.
- Agent Transfer: Hand conversations over to human support agents when the chatbot can’t answer a question.
Pricing
Kommunicate offers three plans—Lite ($100/month), Advanced ($200/month), and Business (custom).
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Omnichannel support
- Easy to use
- Constant upgrades
- Interactive
Cons
- Expensive
- Lacks analytics
Conclusion
In an era where customer expectations are soaring, businesses are turning to innovative solutions to redefine their customer support strategies. Chatbots offer a comprehensive list of benefits that businesses can take advantage of to enhance their support operations.
At Chatling, we help businesses create flexible, accurate AI customer support chatbots that can improve resolution rates by an average of 53% and resolution times by an average of 250%. Get more done with less effort and fewer resources by leveraging AI-powered chatbots.